III
INTERNATIONAL
Violet was attending to another customer when Mr. Bauersch came into the shop. She ignored him until she had sped the first customer, who happened also to be "in the trade." According to Violet's code, all customers were equal in the sight of the shopkeeper, and although the first customer was shabby and dirty, and carried for his acquisitions a black stuff sack which he slung over his shoulder, Violet would not abate one comma of her code. Nevertheless, while ignoring, she appraised Mr. Bauersch, whom on his previous visits she had only glimpsed once. She was confirmed in her original lightning impression that he bore a resemblance to Henry. He was of about the same age and build; he had the same sort of pointed beard, and the same mild demeanour; and also his suit was of the same kind and colour of cloth as Henry wore on Sundays. But what a different suit from Henry's! It had a waist. Violet did not like that. Unaware that Mr. Bauersch clothed himself in London, she attributed the waist to the decadent eccentricity of New York. Nor did she like the excessive width of the black ribbon which held Mr. Bauersch's pince-nez. Nor did she like the boldly exposed striped shirt—(nobody except Violet and Elsie ever saw even the cuffs of Mr. Earlforward's shirt, to say nothing of the front)—nor the elegant, carefully studied projecting curve of the necktie. In short, Mr. Bauersch failed utterly to match Violet's ideal of a man of business.
She turned to him at last, as he was strolling about curiously, and greeted him with the hard, falsely genial, horrible smile of the suspicious woman who is not going to be done in the eye in a commercial matter. This was not at all the agreeable Violet of the confectioner's shop. And the reason for the transformation was that she had a husband to protect, that the prestige and big transactions of the great Bauersch made her nervous, and that Mr. Bauersch was from New York. Violet, I regret to say, had fixed and uncharitable notions about foreigners. Mr. Bauersch acknowledged her greeting with much courtesy, and with no condescension whatever.
"My name's Bauersch, Mrs. Earlforward," said he. (Why should he so certainly assume that she was Mrs. Earlforward?)
"Oh, yes!" she murmured, simpering. "You've called about the books, I suppose?" Her tone indicated that there was just a chance of his having called about the gas or the weather.
"Yes. Are they all ready for shipping?" (What did he mean by "shipping"? They were ready for him to take away, ready for dispatch.)
She nodded vaguely.
"Those are the cases, no doubt," said Mr. Bauersch, pointing to the office, and walking into it without invitation.